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Poor farmers in Tanzania are using modern information and communication technologies like mobile phones and even the Internet to get access to market information, and to learn how to build better and more collaborative market chains from producer to consumer. Market “spies”, known locally as shu shu shus, investigate prices and other aspects of local markets, then use their mobile phones to report the information back to their villages. Soon they might be using SMS to access Internet-based databases of locally-relevant market information.

The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) estimates that approximately 1.5 billion people depend in some way or another on bamboo and rattan. Bamboo not only is deemed to be the fastest growing plant on the planet, it also is a viable replacement for wood, an essential structural material in earthquake architecture and a renewable source for agroforesty production. These characteristics make bamboo unique in terms of its potential contribution to sustainable development. What is less well known is the fact that bamboo has helped protect young Tanzanian girls and women from HIV/AIDS by saving them from the trap of prostitution. This is thanks to a Tanzanian woman by the name of Pauline Samata.

Rising food prices are having a devastating effect on the poorest people, particularly smallholder farmers in developing countries. A short video being screened during the Second Consultation Session on the Eighth Replenishment illustrates what can happen when smallholder farmers get access to both credit and storage facilities for their grains and what impact that can have on rural incomes and food security. The video features the IFAD-supported Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme (AMSDP) in Tanzania and a warehouse receipt component that enables smallholder farmers to store their harvest and then sell it when prices improve. While waiting to sell their grain, farmers can also use it as collateral to borrow cash from a credit cooperative.
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As one of 15 wives of a Masai Chief, Monica Mhadi's life has always been better off than other women in her village in rural Tanzania. Even so, she lost four of her seven children because of poor sanitary conditions. Luckily,such tragedies are no longer an inevitable part of Monica's world.

Teaching poor farmers better ways to produce poultry and vegetables helps them increase their incomes and improve their families’ living conditions. Through farmers’ field schools, small-scale producers learn new methods and share useful experiences, joining in groups to make the most of their agricultural potential. Two IFAD-funded programmes support more than 200 farmers’ field schools in Zanzibar, working to empower small-scale farmers to overcome poverty.

When farmers have secure access to credit and reliable storage facilities for their grain, it gives them the option to sell when they can get the best price. This means that in a situation of rising food prices small farmers stand to benefit, not to lose. The warehouse receipt system, introduced through the IFAD-supported Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme in Tanzania, is now being mainstreamed by the government throughout the country.

Rising food prices are having a devastating effect on the poorest people, particularly smallholder farmers in developing countries. A short video being screened during the Second Consultation Session on the Eighth Replenishment illustrates what can happen when smallholder farmers get access to both credit and storage facilities for their grains and what impact that can have on rural incomes and food security. The video features the IFAD-supported Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme (AMSDP) in Tanzania and a warehouse receipt component that enables smallholder farmers to store their harvest and then sell it when prices improve. While waiting to sell their grain, farmers can also use it as collateral to borrow cash from a credit cooperative.
Watch video:
Quicktime | Realplayer | Windows Media Player

To the market vendors who sell him vegetables and rice, Stanley Mchome is just another customer, albeit one who asks a great many questions. But in reality, Stanley’s inquisitiveness is far more than friendly banter. When he’s not tending to his rice fields in Northern Tanzania, Stanley is a “Mkulima Shushushu” – Kiswahili for “market spy.”

Watch this short video as featured on CNN World Report:
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The First Mile is a pilot project that encourages small farmers, traders, processors and others in the market chain to work and think collaboratively, not competitively, to improve their access to markets and customers. Mobile phones, radio, e-mail and the Internet are just some of the communications tools being used to connect those in isolated communities. And while technology is important, trust and relationship-building are the primary goals.

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The rural population of the central dry areas of the United Republic of Tanzania faces severe constraints due to the lack of safe water supply and health services. Agricultural production increases alone are not sufficient to bring about all-round development. The Water Supply and Health Project in the Marginal Areas is complementing the production-oriented IFAD Smallholder Development Project for Marginal Areas

Dodoma (Tanzania, United Republic of) became a name before it became a town. There are different stories about how it happened. One story is that some Wagogo stole a herd of cattle from their southern neighbours the Wahehe; the Wagogo killed and ate the animals, preserving only the tails, and when the Wahehe came looking for the lost herd all they found were the tails sticking out of a patch of swampy ground. "Look", said the Wagogo, "Your cattle have sunk in the mud, Idodomya". Dodoma in chigogo means "it has sunk". There is yet another story which is most commonly accepted on the name Dodoma. An elephant came to drink at the nearby Kikuyu stream (so named after the Mikuyu fig trees growing on its banks) and got stuck in the mud. Some local people who saw it exclaimed "Idodomya" and from that time on the place became known as Idodomya, the place where it sank

MSANGANI VILLAGE – The Omari family's store in Msangani Village in the district of Kibaha in east central Tanzania is a hub of village activity. Not only is it the place where villagers buy their staples, but the shady tree in front is the site of meetings of the village elders and the place where Msangani's children and women gather once every three months for Child Health Days.

In Southern Africa, inorganic fertilizers are often too costly for the rural poor.

Without access to fertilizers, farmers struggle to grow food for a growing population. At the same time, a host of related issues such as deforestation, land degradation, soil erosion, local climate change, and loss of biodiversity all hasten the decline of soil fertility.

The Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) takes an annual budget of $15 million and spreads it in small doses across more than 2.200 similar projects in the poorest rural areas of the country, including the Zanzibar archipelago. A $60 million loan from the World Bank is financing TASAF's first four year. Drawing on a national database of poverty statistics, the Fund has pinpointed the poorest third of Tanzania's districts for its programs. Rather than have bureaucrats in the capital choose which services and programs go where, the agency goes straight to the village and asks them what they need. The villagers take the heim from designing the project to making it a reality.

Boniface Mwashende is a small-scale sunflower farmer in southern Tanzania, who processes his crop into profitable oil and seedcake. Sunflower seedcake is an ideal feed for poultry and other livestock. Boniface used to take his sunflower to a nearby industrial oilseed processor, who not only charged him for processing his oilseed but also made him buy back the seedcake. As a result, Boniface's poultry enterprise was barely profitable.

In times of drought you can often see the devastating impact on the land, the farmers with their dry and cracked fields, the failed crops, the pastoralists with their dead and dying livestock. Harder to see are the rural landless, the people who have no animals and nowhere to go.

Noorkishili Naingisha and Namamu Nguya are members of the Immemuriti Women’s Group in Ololosokwan village. After receiving a cash loan from Oxfam the group has begun making and selling traditional beadwork as well as investing in some livestock.

‘Nemak’ is one of three women’s associations in Ngorongoro district that have received support from Oxfam. It represents the 25 women’s groups of Endulen Ward. The groups each have about five members, and carry out a wide range of trading activities, buying and selling sugar, goats and sheep, cattle, honey, cooking oil, beadwork and other items. Oxfam made the first loans to help support the women’s business activities in 2002.

Shinyanga is a town of about 135,000 people in north-western Tanzania. Its inhabitants suffered badly in the disastrous droughts which hit Tanzania in the mid to late nineties.